Climate change, no longer a debatable issue kept for backrooms and whispered in the homes of doomsayers. But a reality that we cannot run from, a fact that is changing our weather patterns, and a like a creeping fog, will sooner or later envelope us all. For some this tragedy is closer than we would like to think, and they need your help fast.

Kiribati is a sinking island. The IPCC projects that the Pacific Ocean will swallow most of Kiribati by the end of this century. But before then, climate change will have ravaged the island, and made it unlivable anyway.

Before it sinks beneath the sea, ocean creep will make the islands uninhabitable. Sea level rise, and coupled with more intense storm cycles, will contaminate the water table, pollute the small pockets of agricultural land and destroy homes and businesses. There is no escaping the misery climate change will cause. What sort of life can this island offer, what sort of future does it hold? At best, a future where one watches his world collapses beneath him.

Why then has New Zealand turned away someone trying to escape this horror?

According to New Zealand’s court of appeal: Teitiota, a Kiribati national. “Is not a climate change refugee.”

Despite the facts on the island, the New Zealand court of appeals is sending Teitiota, his wife and their children back to Kiribati, where the court believes they can “resume their prior subsistence life with dignity”.

I do not know where the dignity in this is, and I fail to see how a court could send a man and his family back to a country doomed to such a sad and terrible fate. Teitiota is looking to better his life for himself, his wife and moe importantly, his children. They deserve a fair go.

Teitiota needs our help, his family needs our help.

We cannot allow a man and his family to be sent to a place where they have no future, where poverty and death is almost certain.

Sign this petition if you want to save a life, sign this petition if you want to save a family, and sign this petition if you want to save a generation of families, and all of there children.

We implore Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse to reconsider turning this man and his family away, and all future climate change refugees.